'What we call little things are merely the causes of great things: they are the beginning, the embryo and the point of departure, which generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence.'

Susan Collis

Susan Collis's work might at first glance appear to be out of place in an exhibition, and you have to look closely to discover it. Mundane things, seemingly left behind from a previous exhibition, are actually meticulously worked by hand.

Collis trained as a sculptor in London. She works with traditional craft techniques such as marquetry and embroidery, stitching paint splatters on dust sheets and inlaying marks on the surface of a table. Using materials such as diamonds and gold, she transforms Rawlplugs and screws into precious objects to be looked at yet not used. Labouring for many months on a single piece, Collis consciously celebrates both the humility and discipline of making something really well.

'I have always wanted my work to bring together two different opposing terms, like tidy and untidy, clean and dirty - to bring them together and see what happens. I think this ties into my feelings about craft. Craft in my mind, has that 'good' label and that's what draws me to it. To make something look bad, dirty or stained using these processes that are usually deemed to be good and worthy, to jumble up the two.'

More Research

Olu Amoda is a sculptor, a designer and a teacher from Nigeria. He makes work from materials salvaged from the scrapyards and streets of Lagos, taking his inspiration from daily life in the city.

Amoda works with what he finds, only deciding on the form of a new piece when he has gathered its component parts. He welds and assembles things such as discarded nails and old locks into intricate sculpture and solid security doors designed to keep thieves out. He is interested in the former lives of the objects he uses and in the new meanings they take on when they are brought together.

'Nails are used in my work as a metaphor. They have survived generations and remain one of the most ideal and enduring pieces of engineering. Nails depend on the notion of shared responsibilities, like ants. Small but lethal, a nail is able to defend itself, but yields to will of the craftsman. What we call little things are merely the causes of great things: they are the beginning, the embryo and the point of departure, which generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence.'

Part of a series of short lunchtime talks to accompany Out of the Ordinary, an exhibition that brings together international artists placing craft at the heart of their practice.

Artist Catherine Bertola discusses her new artwork, commissioned specially for Out of the Ordinary by Museums Sheffield, made in response to Sheffield’s metalwork collection. Finding inspiration in the Sheffield designed Parish pattern cutlery, the artist has created an intricate carpet of metal pins, carefully recreating the designs in a playful new context.

Research

Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft brings together the work of eight contemporary artists who place craft at the heart of their practice: Olu Amoda, Catherine Bertola, Annie Cattrell, Susan Collis, Naomi Filmer, Lu Shengzhong, Yoshihiro Suda and Anne Wilson.
Collectively these artists use a diverse range of traditional and new technologies, from carving, sewing, welding to animation and laser etching. Working with exceptional skill and attention to detail, they use ordinary materials - paper, thread, dust and nails - to make works that are both intricate and large in scale.
All the artists are preoccupied with the everyday as a subject. Mundane or familiar things, like a paint splatter on a dust sheet, a human breath or a weed pushing up through a crack, are presented in playful and unexpected ways. Look closely or you might miss them!
Together, these eight artists suggest new directions for the handmade in the 21st century. They have found ways to transform the ordinary into artworks that are truly extraordinary.

Thought Processes!

A Wardrobe closet of a personal belongings.I chose this because of the set objects in each shelf of the wardrobe. Each carefully placed alongside the next similar object. ie. Book to book, toy to toy, box to box…
Why do we do this? Why must we feel the need to arrange our possessions in such a way…. What makes us feel the need to place similar objects together, and distance them from other objects of the same or similar usages? From this I begin to think of the concept of out of ordinary objects/subjects, of opposite things ie. A child’s lunchbox (as in the image above) sitting next to a bottle of vodka…! I know that this particular example is due to the obvious hazardous reasons but what if it was in a larger context?!
What if in between the toy books we had seen an out of place object such as a union jack (Banksy) or a mug with a picture of a naked woman on it…? It’s kind of the same as the concept of asking the question of “Why do we name a chair a chair? Who says it is a chair and not a fork?” Who say’s, taking out of the equation any hazardous or other validating reasons for a second, that we should place all of our clothes in wardrobes and categorize them? Documents in folders, cutlery in cupboards etc!

What do we think when we see out of place objects? I guess you could say I’m trying to subvertise objects, placing them in out of ordinary environments…I would like to investigate this and see what I come up with! From this maybe even developing it into objects becoming something else with a different purpose, form etc. From this my aim is to question our way of thinking about objects and their purposes to us ie. the way in which we think as a whole.

Some of my recent work

 

In this project my aim was to take old objects/ subjects and somehow make them look new again! With these old coins I bought in a vintage shop I soaked in coke for hours... Some come up new again, some didn't because they were so old but I didn't really mind that it hadn't worked. The photographs showed their uniqueness! the build up of dirt and grime through the years, the countless number of hands that had held them, the marks and dents made them truly unique to photogragh each and every one of them. Quite ironic as coins are mechanically made to look identical to the next!